Have you experienced the weird atmosphere which comes after a funny story you’ve cracked fell flat on the target audience?

Or, do you have the belief that you are, simply, not funny at all?

Even the most confident speakers may falter when it comes to the skill of injecting humour adequately in their speeches. Not to worry, though, as this entry aims to offer several tips which, I hope, will guide you in adding just the right dosage of humour in the right moment so as to make your stories or punchlines work.

As the cliché saying goes,laughter is the best medicineand people today are drawn towards humour like bees to honey simply because cynicism has been ingrained in today’s culture. Thus the value-add of humour in public speaking. While, this may be the case, a lot of people out there find themselves lacking the skill sets to pull off punch lines effectively and effortlessly.

Though humour is commonly believed to be an elusive art to master, I think otherwise.

How can I avoid a humour debacle?

The great comic Jim Mendrinos once shared,“In order to be funny, you got to first know what makes you laugh as this will give you obvious clues to what makes other people laugh.”This means that you have to know what form of humour works for you, and what does not!

Different people find different things funny and these are all common elements in your everyday life, be it in everyday conversations, quotes, books etc. Humour is ubiquitous in life!

There are many forms of humour, ranging from normal banter to exaggeration techniques. Hence, make an effort tobuild a humour bank! It will be great to start off by observing yourself and the people around you. Jot down the comical instances which occur – there has to be noteworthy ones each day! You will never know when these instances will come in handy as ammunition for your speeches.

On the day of your speech,get to know the audience!As Scott Friedman of Advanced Public Speaking Institute suggests,“the more you know about the audience, the more opportunities you will have to play with them”. Understand the dynamics of the audience, as this will make it easier for you to relate to them through your language, tone and the framework of your speech. As mentioned above, different people find different things funny. So, knowing your audience allows you to cater your humour to the intended group in mind properly – chances are that knock-knock jokes are unlikely to work for adults as opposed to primary school children!

Also, be sure toknow the intention of the speechand what you intend for the audience to get out of listening to you. Time is a precious commodity these days, and implanting suggestive and timely, yet relevant humour, will be a very effective way to make your speech more memorable without having to drone on and on with examples. Establish and manoeuvre your speech around this purpose, bearing in mind what works for you, as well as the target audience, in creating your stories or punch lines.

There are also potholes to avoid, so do not step into them! The following is a compilation of some “Don’t”s , adapted from the Rostrum publication “Tips on Public Speaking and Meeting Procedures Vol 1”:

1.Don’tuse recycled jokes and stories, the faux pas of public speaking. As you have probably experienced this yourself while listening to speeches before, hearing familiar stories countless times before are bound to elicit groans instead of laughs.

2.Don’tlaugh at your own jokes while reciting it — self-control is important! The best way to pull off a punch line is always with a straight face. This will catch the audience off guard and intensify the humorous effect.

3.Don’tgive the audience too little time to savour your punch line. Let them digest and laugh before you move on! This will allow the audience to catch the subsequent stories after that.

4.Don’tever explain your jokes or punch lines! If the audience fail to get the joke, move on. Explaining the joke will not help matters, especially when the funny moment did not, have not, and will not come. To lighten the tense mood at this instant, though, some self-effacing humour may work.

Why do people laugh?

To help find the key in instilling humour in your speech, let us take a look behind the scenes at what makes people laugh. Max Eastman, author of The Enjoyment of Laughter presents thefour laws of humourrelated to being “in fun”.

The first law is thatthings will only be funny when we are “in fun”. You must however still observe that beneath our humour may lurk serious thoughts or motives, but even in that state you may still perceive things as funny. This is the “half in fun” state. As the speaker, knowing the audience well enough will assist in breaking the ice and getting them to be “in fun”.

The second law is thatwhen we are “in fun”, a shift of values takes placeso that pleasant things will remain pleasant, while negative things will also acquire a positive emotional flavour and in turn provoke laughter. This is so long that they are not so disagreeable that they end up “spoiling the fun”. A positive example is in the form of self-effacing humour, where you laugh at yourself for something negative, thereby inciting laughter in others.

The third law is thatbeing “in fun” is a condition most natural to childhood, and that children at play reveal the humorous laugh at its rawest. You may notice that, to kids, every action which may be shocking or even disturbing, is enjoyable as ‘funny’ unless it is disastrous enough to force them out of the mood of “fun” (in which tears will supersede)

The fourth law is thatgrown-up people retain varying degrees of this aptitude of being “in fun”and thus enjoy unpleasant things as funny, to varying degrees. Therefore, the main challenge for you as the speaker is to reach out to the entire audience present, even the detractors within a crowd who have lower degrees of aptitude for being “in fun”.

With all that being said, try it out! You will never know what works for you unless you do so. BE FUNNY and have your audience rolling off their seats!